Posted by Gary Rosenzweig on 10/27/09. You can follow Gary on Twitter.What are you doing right now? Post this to Twitter!This week the Apple rumor sites are out of control. They are reporting on a mention of an “Apple Slate” by the executive editor of the New York Times. They say that this mention, in a private meeting, is proof that the device exists and is coming soon. I find it amazing that bits of data like this are reported as akin to fact. Being a rumor makes it OK to report it as a kind of news.

The latest two snippets could be filed under not actually related or speculative wishful thinking. The first takes harping obsessively over the tiniest of new hardware and hyping it into something it may or may not be. Images turning up on engadget purport to be the SIM card tray for the iPhone 4 and the mythical tablet. The new trays feature thicker edges, a metal frame, and a few adjustments made to the size of the extraction hole.

Perhaps just an off-hand reference to the swirling rumors or perhaps an insider comment from a guy tasked with bringing the New York Times digital online efforts up to speed. Whatever the case, a telling example of Apple’s overarching influence in the digital. Gawker has dug up a six-day-old reference to the Apple tablet in the form of a presentation made by New York Times (NYT) columnist Bill Keller, who’s also working on making that publication’s digital forays pay.